


Commentadore

by cognomen



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: AU, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-23
Updated: 2010-06-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:59:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,859
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cognomen/pseuds/cognomen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first perjury I committed to paper, as a method originally of self-placation and comfort, was on the eve of that darkest day of my life - that lie that many have undoubtedly read and believed within the text of The Final Problem, as that 'adventure' came to be titled when finally I had wrung from it most of my desperate emotion to make it suitable for publication.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Commentadore

  
I have told many lies in my career as the biographer of Sherlock Holmes, and always - with a single exception - these falsehoods have been placed in order to protect the identities of clients, or Holmes himself. I have changed names, dates, and locations, while still maintaining at the heart of the story what was most important to convey. All of these I feel are forgivable in the long run of things, and Holmes himself concurs on the necessity of them.

There is one, however - the greatest lie I have ever told - that I regret. It was this untruth that lead to many others, and I will hope that when time comes for publication of this manuscript, it will be understood that I told this falsity to protect myself. If that is cowardice, then I hope the fact that good has come from this great lie will be pointed to as a reason for it to continue as it did.

The first perjury I committed to paper, as a method originally of self-placation and comfort, was on the eve of that darkest day of my life - that lie that many have undoubtedly read and believed within the text of The Final Problem, as that 'adventure' came to be titled when finally I had wrung from it most of my desperate emotion to make it suitable for publication.

This first deceit was that no bodies were found at the foot of Reichenbach falls, as I most shamefully wrote that both of them were lost forever in the rapids at the foot. Indeed, neither was, and here I commit the truth of the matter - I found the pulverized forms of both the Professor Moriarty and my greatest friend, Sherlock Holmes, dashed to lifelessness on the rocks at the foot of the falls.

The bodies were wet, soaked through, and pushed hard against the edges of the stream by the current until they had wedged there. I could not tell if either had survived the initial fall and scrabbled their way onto shore only to die of internal injuries alone save but for the defeated enemy at their backs.

I pulled my friend off the rocks myself, analytically noting the dark blotches of bleeding under his skin and my own able fingers confirmed the lack of a beating heart, the absence of a pulse. There was a lot of blood in his hair, from a laceration in the scalp, and as my hand brushed through it in disbelief it came away bloody. I persisted anyway.

I couldn't stand to see it in dishevel, not in death - it had only been in such a disorder when he was _most_ alive. Early in the mornings, when he had not slept the night through or in exertion; when he or I wrestled a violent criminal.

I sat for a very long time, working to rearrange his hair, coax closure into rigoring eyelids. It was cold and dark, and I was as soaked as my friend when I realized myself still sitting at the foot of those cursed falls, the spray hitting my face - all of me- until the tears were drops amidst an ocean. Everything was quiet, distant. At some point the men had fetched a stretcher back up the trail, but some feral animal quality of my mourning must have warned them away until I was ready.

That night as I sat alone, having made a valiant effort at executing a plan - such as the sort of plan that can be made in such an event anyway - I ran out of steam entirely around four in the morning. All the others had abandoned me as a hopeless, unthinking ball of inertia, moving forward always. I was kineticism embodied, thoughtless motion carrying me through a telegram to Mycroft, another to Lestrade, arrangements for a casket, somehow all worked themselves with my hands and voice. I packed his things. My things. Unpacked. Re-packed.

At last I collapsed, out of things to do with myself save sit alone - not alone, I was with Holmes, my mind insisted. I sat, held his one cold left hand with my own. Without allowing the block of ice my mind had become to thaw, I absently fell to small, nervous motions. I worried my hair into a disarray, undid my cufflinks and promptly lost them to be forgotten and never recovered beneath the bed. At some point I bit off all the nails of my right hand, and as I peeled the thumbnail off with my teeth, the sweet tang of old blood brought a sudden jolt that woke up my mind from it's protective torpor.

_Holmes' blood._ Under my nails. _Holmes' blood._

I did not bite the nails off my left hand but sat very quietly, hand in hand with a dead man. _My dead friend_, my subconscious whispered - until the police constable came to tell me the carriage had come to take us to the train station. The coffin was downstairs, too. I could not at first bear to look at it or watch them put him into it. That he would never come out again was somehow all that I could think about, my mind fixating on the smallest details so it would not be confronted with the vastness of the concept.

I remember little of the return to London, save standing on the deck of the ship as we crossed the ocean - as _I_ crossed the ocean - and staring out to sea. I did not sleep, and only ate when food was forced into my hands.

An emptiness as vast as the ocean stretched before me, lasting from sunrise to sunset.

-

It was not three years until I saw Holmes again. It was not three months or three weeks. I saw him when I returned to London -rounding the corners of long-traveled streets in front of me. Silhouetting lit windows I looked into. His dark tweeds always at the edges of my vision like the specter of too little sleep. It was wracking, the knowledge I must be wrong, that I could not even have plausible excuse deny it to myself. I had sat next to Holmes' coffin the whole way back from the continent - by train and by boat , my hand looped loosely through the pallbearer's handle that I myself used to help carry that heaviest weight along the manicured paths of the cemetery. My grip had not surrendered easily when it came time to lower it - to lower _him_ \- into the ground with finality.

The weight had wrenched my bad shoulder. I remember that the pain was the only thing I felt that week, the one outstanding light in a gray haze, a sole sad compass.

Still, I did not stop seeing him. I did not, either, start sleeping soundly. Mary did not complain, but after four days of rendering us both sleepless with my grief, which she was powerless to assuage, I retired myself into the guest room where I could review endlessly my case-notes, forgoing sleep for countless pages of my own code and hurried scrawl.

When I first saw him again - really _saw_ him - the weather outside had woken me from my already fitful slumber. I slowly became aware again, my eyes still open in the darkness. I could hear rain pounding, just a half awareness of the steady, driving sound. It had hissed into existence like a breeze, a neverending sigh of the gods. I was only partly aware, hovering in that half-consciousness that possesses one who has not slept well in days.

Had it only been that long?

It felt as though someone familiar was already standing beside me, as if they had crept there perhaps while I tried to dream, my mind stringing together half formed images, only partially realized.

"Mary?" I must have asked aloud, as the first peal of lightless thunder rolled over the house.

A sudden flash of cold, electric light revealed Holmes to me instead, standing still and ruined. He bled from a thousand places struck open on his body by merciless rocks, soaking wet and dripping pink-tinged drops to the floor.

When I cried out, he only looked down at me, his eyes lit by an afterflicker, light pushing through his irises to illuminate from within their shining grey depths.

Holmes' gaze was devoid of blame.

My mind surrendered an attempt to reconcile the present with the past, and in my exhaustion, no absolutes occurred. I did not balk at his presence, the both of us utterly still. I watched a trickle of bloodied water run down his neck, curling from his hairline beneath his ear.

My attention was suddenly drawn away toward the stair, a sphere of light slowly resolving itself to be Mary with a candle to light her way in the dark. Her features were creased with a gentle worry, and I half-rose to meet her.

She soothed my brow with her fingers. I was unable to form the words required to describe what was wrong with me, but she understood what was important of it, and kissed me gently on the temple.

"Come back to bed, John. I don't like you down here alone." She took my hand and rose, leading me.

When my eyes slid back to where I had seen Holmes standing by the bookcase of medical texts, the space was empty.

-

Holmes moved ever in the corners of my vision for the first few weeks, his appearance slowly strengthening as my mind restored him to healthy and living through old memorized detail. Long proximity and familiarity returned everything to order, and in that way I watched Holmes recover from Reichenbach falls. It was a slow, silent recovery.

I dreamed vividly and often in those weeks - that I had returned to Baker street. They were not comforting dreams of the past, but strange distractions. In my dreams, I always sat beyond the radius of light, Holmes hunched at his desk and writing furiously, as I had when in a fit of particular inspiration.

I would be struck with the sudden, sure knowledge that somehow, Holmes needed me. Like a cage, the darkness held me back - unable to move or speak. Holmes worked furiously, desperately at his task, and yet I could sense he had hit some wall. I longed to help, to comfort him, but I could not. Instead I stood mute, his frustration eventually becoming so tumultuous that he threw the book and pen from him with a crash and sat with head in hands. His shoulders described a tense line, his every inch on the verge of defeat. He looked as I felt, without him - save that I at least had Mary at my side.

The first time I had the dream, I woke from the middle of it to her coughing. While at first I could dismiss it as a cold, in time I knew better. It came to be that the dreams - indeed _any_ dreams that I had were so interspersed with her coughs and gasps that I could hardly sleep.

Of course, as a doctor, even denial was not something I could allow myself. I knew what fateful hand was slowly strangling my wife - and even that could not, _would_ not, keep me from her side.

"I'm insane," I told her, clutching her hands as she lay on her deathbed, the only other human I could confide in. "Completely insane. I see him everywhere."

"Of course you do." Mary said gently. Her voice was only a shadow of itself, a tiny husk of what it had once been, withered away by the consumption. Her hands made a slow, unsteady journey to cover both of my own. "He was someone you cared very much for, practically a part of you. You'll see me, too."

If my wife had any flaw, it was that she thought too much of me. As much courage as it had taken for me to admit my insanity, I did not have the heart to insist on it.

"Of course I will," I agreed, wondering if I wouldn't indeed. How I would handle two spirits in my life I did not know. I did not speak of it again, and though I sat vigil by my wife, the silent vision of Holmes kept up his vigil over me. At the end, when she did little more than cough weakly and sleep, I was glad for even his figmental company somehow.

Though I felt hollowed out, exhausted and numb again to all emotion, I somehow was not entirely alone. On the day she died, this was the only thing that kept me upright.  
-

Six months and nine days after I lowered Holmes into the ground, I surrendered my wife's coffin to the same cold and permanent embrace. I coughed once, as I released my hold, and I remember to this day the sudden, sharp glance Lestrade gave me over the burnished lid.

I was so destroyed by grief , all I could think was _thank goodness_, and it was startling to me to think that I was relieved that consumption would take me, too. How resigned I was to that fate, how readily accepting of the medical consequence of the proximity I had insisted on keeping to my wife when she had needed me most. I felt totally adrift, even surrounded as I was by others.

It was not to be. I did not inherit the disease. My family had no history, and as I had seen happen, though my tiny house was stuck down, I remained standing. Again, as I had after Maiwand - dazed, directionless, and injured.

Mrs. Hudson, the saintliest of women, came to me after the service where I stood smoking and staring at Holmes' specter - he stood over Mary's grave, looking down into the earth. His expression was as black and serious as the hole he peered into.

She patted my arm, close to the elbow, and I realized then with starting clarity that she was almost as tall as myself. In my perception, she had always been slight and petite, compact and prim. My vision of her was somehow now cleared of years of personal, biased, perception. There was a thread of steel strength in her, one that I had always known existed, but never before seen so clearly in her posture and gesture. I felt braced, sturdier somehow for her caring.

"Doctor," she said gently. She had been crying, I could see, but was not now. "It's not right for you to stay all alone in that house."

I could not answer. Our housekeeper, with seven young children of her own, had taken her leave with my understanding some months earlier. I had never replaced her. My practice had perished with inattention - savings and publishers fees had kept us afloat, though I had neglected most aspects of maintaining a house as I had spent my energies on my wife.

The thought of returning to that that shadowy, unkempt place was quite enough to make me feel as fragile as I had in 1881. Mrs. Hudson understood this as only a female could have.

"Come take your rooms at Baker street back, Doctor." She said. "You know they're still empty and it'd do you good to get away for a while."

I knew, then, that she must miss Holmes almost as much as I did. I wondered, in a brief moment where my mind spun out of control, what she would say if I told her I could see him standing just yards away from us. She missed both her lodgers, the eccentric company that had made her life more than a solitary trek of cooking for one and cleaning the rooms of a ghost.

"I-" I began to refuse, as a gentleman, and then I realized that she would forgive me the weakness of accepting. "I may be sick, also."

Mrs. Hudson clucked her tongue, purposefully ignoring my meaning. "Nothing some good feeding and rest won't fix up, Doctor. Come and have your things sent over, and I'll air out your rooms proper. I've missed having proper attention for meals around."

She brushed her hands over her black skirts with and air of finality that said the matter was settled, and left without letting me think any better of it.

As I packed my things, I encountered an envelope of Mary's, which contained the receipt of her reserved box for the season of opera. Two tears spilled onto it before I could stop them. I had bought it as a gift, an advance plan for her birthday - just two weeks away now. It was a final, hard fact that I had not considered before, and though I had never been too fond of opera, I determined I would go anyway.

  
-  
Even at Baker street I could not sleep, my dreams returning and Holmes' specter somehow growing stronger with my return. He resumed his much loved activities - often I would observe him, my vision shaking with exhaustion, my very eyelids drooping - reading the paper at the dining table. Smoking by the windows, with the ghostly scent of his tobacco trapped in the very fabric of the room itself. Sometimes he would sit with his hand on the case of his violin, as if longing to bring it back out once more to help him with his considerations.

I indulged my fantasy, unable and unwilling to dismiss even my delusion for the frail illusion of company it offered me. My waking life became a slow blur of sluggish consciousness, aided by cup after cup of coffee to chase the cobwebs away from my thoughts when I desired clarity enough to navigate simple tasks such as reading. Once or twice I took up my pen, but any attempt to set down the events that had led to my pitiable state descended irrevocably into such gibberish that I crumpled the papers and cast them into the fire as I had my very first list of Holmes' attributes.

Once, the bell interrupted my thoughts, and though I sat unmoving, barely awake, I eventually realized that Irene Adler had joined Holmes and I in the room. I would not swear the veracity of this event to this day, but hallucination or not, I recall only that event in an entire week of unintelligibility.

"I'm sorry, Doctor." Was the only thing she said to me, looking around the rooms as if she had entered a shrine - and indeed I had allowed nothing to change within them. Even Holmes' untidiness remained, hospitable to me only through years of familiarity with navigating it.

She ran her hands reverently over the items on the mantlepiece, considering her own picture only briefly, before she continued her slow journey around the room. When I looked toward where only I could see Holmes sitting, in his customary chair and with a newspaper folded over his lap in clear surprise, I could sense his agitation at her poking. Though she was cautious and mournful in her contacts.

The woman paused at last by the violin case, and Holmes shot out of his chair in a sudden flurry of motion that sent imagined newspapers fluttering to the floor.

"Watson!" He hissed, his voice as I had always remembered it. It was so clear, so very real - every nuance was Holmes, his familiar agitation sounding as it always had. "Don't let her!"

But I did not stop Irene from touching the Stradivarius, because Holmes was no longer real. Instead I looked steadily at him, no longer a mute hallucination content to exist on the edges of my life. When I looked away again, Irene was gone.  
If it was a dream, it was the most vivid I have ever had.

In my deprivation of sleep and a chance to recover my sound mind in the blessed mercy of dreams, it was my nightmares that eventually came to seem like the reality instead of my waking. I dreamed of Holmes on the trail, casting about like a hound with its nose to a trail as he often had. Yet I could not speak.

My limbs were leaden, solid. As unmoving as a tin soldiers, and I knew that Holmes was waiting for my help. For his sounding board of normality, to help him remember that most minds were plain and worked in only one or two directions at a time, instead of spreading out in rays like the shining of a star, to all directions at once.

He looked up at me in the dreams, waiting. His eyes asked me, begged me to speak, but I was locked in mute witness, unable to assist.

"Watson, please." He would say at last, and I would wake up - always looking frantically for his presence before remembering he had tumbled from Reichenbach, and haunted me yet.

-

Attending the opera proved to be a poor decision. I had always before attended with some great lover of the art - Holmes or Mary - and while I do enjoy music, it is admittedly frustrating that I cannot understand what the singers are elaborating so enthusiastically on with arias.

I do not much love opera, but time in the company of Holmes - who could render effortless and beautiful improvisations on his violin - and Mary, who had a genuine love for the art that was infectious, had softened me to it. In this very opera house, Mary and I had attended a performance of Rigoletto that we had to abandon during the first intermission when her coughing threatened to spoil the performance for those around us during the earliest stages of her consumption.

I had read the libretto some days before, but such was my depression that a white blanket of uncomprehending had plagued my efforts - no matter how many times I passed my eyes over the words, my mind understood only that my Mary would not be attending with me to gently whisper the occasional reminder in my ear, or tease me gently in the intermission. Indeed, she had never attended Don Giovanni, though she had always had a fondness for Mozart.

I recalled now, as my eyes dimly followed the action on stage, how she would hum bits from the magic flute when she was content.

Now I regretted my inattention, unable to distract myself with only the most basic sense of what was happening. The story twisted itself into being, vague and only half formed in my mind. The one thread I could follow with consistency was that of the murdered commentadore, and his vengeful living statue.

The still divo, painted gray and wearing a costume the color of slate, sprung to life in so fantastic a way as to almost distract me from my preoccupation.

I sat, all the while conscious of the empty seat beside me, the silence of the theater. Before me the tale unwound, sung passionately in arias and duets - Giovanni's unrepentant depravity withering most everything he touched, and yet women seemed to love him for it.

Holmes arrived suddenly during the second act and I gasped as I became aware of him, my intake of breath doubly covered and excused by the forceful knockings of Don Giovanni's doom arriving by his own invitation.

He always had the taste for drama in life. As the commentadore warned Giovanni of his fate, Holmes leaned over to murmur in my ear, aware that I could not respond and that I alone could see or hear him.

"The unthinkable has happened," said he, whispering against my earlobe, though he could have shouted from the stage for all anyone else would hear. "Don Giovanni's challenge to hell herself has been answered - though the Don himself does not believe it."

I do not speak a word of Italian, though I knew the story of the opera well enough. Leporello hid himself beneath a table, but the Don stood tall and unrepentant, seeming to think the entire madness a joke. Holmes' voice continued.

"Here, the icy touch surprises him," Holmes narrated over the astonished cry from the stage. "No longer can Giovanni deny what is happening to him. He feels the rapid descent of his cage, his heart seizes of the thought of damnation."

Holmes chuckled.

"How often have our clutches made evil men feel this way, Watson? Every time, I should hope."  
-

From that moment onward, Holmes was my constant companion - and it seemed now that he had begun speaking, his vow of silence was broken. He sat whispering in my ear through Carmen, sharing its secret intricacies with me - how the knowledge was mine to hallucinate was entirely unknown to me, but the help with a story that would have otherwise been as elusive as the love it sought to convey was at least marginally appreciated.

In Tosca, he scoffed at the score, but told me the story anyway, the illusion of his breath on my neck perhaps caused by my inability to sleep, or some small draft. The lurid tale of jealousy, and the overbearing evil of Scarpia led me to exit the theater with no impression of the show beyond sharing Holmes' low opinion of Puccini, no matter how compelling an end Tosca herself met.

Sometimes he did not make his presence known until the middle of an act, when suddenly I would notice him sitting beside me and leaning forward, or standing forward at the rail to peer into the orchestra pit, perhaps at the violinists. At intermission he would sit and speak to me, upholding a one-sided conversation that I did not even have the energy to protest or scold myself into willing away. I simply did my best to ignore my hallucinations.

He became more persistent, then. What scattered sleep I could get was tortured away from me with imagined scratchings of the violin, hallucinated footsteps pacing the floorboards of the sitting room below me - once or twice the phantom smell of his shag tobacco drifted up as I attempted to sleep, startling me rapidly from the precipice of slumber to dash downstairs and check to be sure that the persian slipper still hung by the fireplace had not caught aflame. I always awoke from the same nightmare - that Holmes needed me and I was unable to move or speak, condemned to torturous spectation.

I began to drag myself from place to place, lacking in energy and drive. I ignored Holmes as best I could, telling myself over and over that it was only a result of my lack of sleep and grief. It was a relief, then, when he failed to show up at the beginning of Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operetta - the only one I did not need to even glance at a libretto to understand. I did not laugh, but my mind was glad for the ease of understanding. The plot did not matter, and thus I did not have to chide myself to keep up with it, nor did I need the assistance of Holmes in the matter.

Some part of me still must have expected him to join me, as he always had before.

When I glanced over at the end of the show - all of the singers linking hands and bowing deeply to a thunderous applause, Holmes was still not there. I was astounded.

I attended nine showings of H.M.S. Pinafore, becoming a sponsor of the opera, though it was so that I could entertain some small delusion of sanity that I attended, rather than any great enjoyment of the piece. I learned to sleep in act-long bursts, somehow more able to shut out an entire orchestra and chorus than Holmes' voice. My body became cued to lull itself into slumber, and to this day I grow drowsy when I hear 'We Sail the Ocean Blue'.

I wondered what I should do as I stumbled, barely refreshed, out of the last showing in London. The production was a magnificent success, and due now to move on to France. How should I sleep without arias or applause?

Holmes stood patiently on the kerb outside the theaters. He was smoking his pipe contemplatively. Were I to guess, if there were actual ashes present, I would assume to find a pile by his foot that might indicate he had waited there the whole show for me.

"You know," Holmes began, as I drew up beside him. He did not look at me, but instead up at the darkly overcast sky. "If you want time to yourself, all you need do is ask. "

I was aghast. So great was my surprise that the only response I could manage was, "Would that have worked?"

"Of course it would, my dear Watson. " Holmes' mouth turned up faintly, his smallest smile. "I respect your personal privacy, after all."

My sigh must have conveyed my entire opinion on the matter. He tapped the ash out from his pipe, the wind scattering it before it hit the cobbles, or perhaps it never would have anyway, being entirely imaginary.

"I've simply been worried for your wellbeing, old friend. I hope you can forgive me for hovering."

"You let me attend an entire run of H.M.S. Pinafore without telling me I didn't have to?"

Holmes' only answer was an infuriating grin.

-

I recall the first night that I was able to sleep for the entirety of it - and much of the morning after - with the perfect clarity that someone might remember the end of a long imprisonment, or the cessation of torture. I did not dream, I simply finally surrendered to my exhaustion - sleeping, in fact, not in my own room but on the settee in the sitting room. A great blackness stretched out, and though Mrs. Hudson must have come up to see about serving me breakfast, she displayed again that strain of kindness and matronly affection that I so admire in her, and did not interrupt me.

I awoke partially covered in a blanket, and much refreshed. Holmes stood silhouetted in the great front window, peering out with two of his fingers wrapped in the curtains to draw it aside. I could see the sun on his features, and the familiarity reassured me such that a feeling I can describe only as bliss settled over me, and I returned to sleep.

It was hunger that at last woke me again, and I ate the supper Mrs. Hudson served with a gusto that I had not applied to food in recent memory. It was that day that I really began my recovery, though as I continued to sleep normally and my constant visions of Holmes did not ease, worry began to set in.

Holmes, for his part, continued on as if everything were normal. Though I wondered for my own sanity, I occasionally conversed with him on minor subjects, much as we would between cases. He seemed to continue on his life even when I could not actively see him - occasionally emerging from his room, or wandering in from downstairs, but mostly I would come downstairs to find him in the sitting room and reading his paper, or smoking his pipe, the remembered smell something I perceived with a frightful ease.

So comforting was his presence, however, that I began to allow it. At first it was subconscious - I could not spend every waking moment of a day screwing my eyes closed and willing him out of existence. If my mind was so convinced that I needed his presence for stability - and the nightmares, indeed, had stopped - then so be it, I decided. So long as I was careful, and did not lose sight of the fact that he was dead, then what harm could it do for me to indulge myself? After all, now that the opera season was over I rarely went out, and I never entertained company. Mrs. Hudson was my sole companion and confidant, and we limited our conversations to affectionate niceties for the most part, though I understood that she enjoyed caring for me, and I always appreciated it when she would lay out an extra biscuit.

It was with extreme surprise that as the summer turned to fall that year, the days shortening and growing brisker, I received an unexpected caller in the form of Inspector Lestrade. He looked a trifle leaner, as if times had been hard on him as well. I recognized the dark circles under his eyes as a lack of sleep, his nervous hands even more flighty after we greeted each other.

"It's just I haven't seen much of you around, Doctor." He tried, summoning up the ghost of his old smile. I remembered it, from when the three of us would sit in this very room and discuss whatever puzzle he could dredge up from the usually remarkably boring and commonplace crimes that Scotland Yard was forced to investigate on a daily basis. "And I was in the area, so I figured I'd stop by and pay-"

He stopped himself, shrugged his thin shoulders, and acquired a sheepish tilt to his eyebrows. "Figured I'd stop in for a spot of tea."

Holmes regarded him coolly over one folded edge of his newspaper, where only I could see him sitting in his chair, but said nothing.

I realized, studying the Inspector's posture, that he was worried for me. I wondered if he had heard something, and if he had, what? It was no use speculating - though some insight suggested to me that he was also lonesome for the company of the remarkable friend we had shared. At first the notion was strange, but of course I would not have to stray far to find some memory of the man - after all I indulged my own fantasy that he sat in the very room with us.

I poured us both brandies, and he accepted his gratefully, with an air of great relief - like a poor swimmer who has been thrown a rope.

"I'll admit, Doctor, it's just not the same." Lestrade confessed, as he sank into a chair. He had a fortifying sip of brandy, and continued. "Why I have a pretty puzzle that I'd crawl on hands and knees to have Holmes' assistance on - but that's not why I've come."

"The brandy is most excellent, I'll admit," I commented, "But hardly worth the ride here all the way from Whitehall."

"I'm in a tough spot, Doctor. Our usual police surgeon has just gotten married, and gone off on some fantastic honey moon to France. I need a doctor whom I can rely on, and you know I'm sorry to intrude on you after everything..." He glanced at my mourning, meaningfully. By now the outfit was so habitual that I had to consider his meaning for a moment before I came to realize it.

"Of course, Lestrade." I said, as the idea struck me as a fantastic one. I had hardly left 221B for weeks, and then only to make the occasional unavoidable journey to the tobacconist or for some other necessity. I suddenly was enthusiastic to be out of the place, struck with a sudden and severe case of cabin fever that even extended to journeying out for so macabre a reason as to study a corpse. "You may rely on me."

"I knew you were just the man, Doctor Watson." Lestrade smiled, sitting up in his chair. "Of course the Yard will compensate you for your time, if you'd just like to come and have a look at a body, it'd be a great help."

"Fantastic idea, my dear Watson!" Holmes chimed in, and I resisted turning my head to look at him as he leapt to his feet and stretched himself out, throwing his arms in the air and twisting as sinuously as a lion rousing itself for a hunt. "A case is just the thing to get us back on our feet."

It was then I began to think I had made a mistake, but I could not back out now. Lestrade had the ever obliging police wagon waiting for us downstairs, and I paused only to recover my much neglected doctor's satchel - first making sure that all of the equipment was still contained therein. The drive there was not terribly eventful, though Holmes sat next to me on the empty bench, fairly vibrating with energy as he often had before a case. It was difficult to keep my eyes on Lestrade, and once or twice I caught him pointing a concerned look in my direction.

The estate house we arrived at was a magnificent thing, the grounds were small but well groomed, and the house itself was in excellent repair. I got an impression of a well-to-do household that ran itself efficiently and with a careful lack of excess, though I saw very little of the actual inside of the house, as Lestrade ushered me pointedly through the foyer and sitting rooms into a study secreted at the back of the house.

The room was darkly paneled, with a colorful rug at the center that must have been hand woven and imported. The walls were nearly lined with book cases, though a desk occupied one side of the room, and on the other was a sideboard with a portrait hung over it. The feature that attracted most of my attention, however, was the dead body sprawled on the carpet by one of the book cases.

I moved to examine it, keeping carefully to the bare wood floor so as not to disturb any evidence in the carpet. I examined the body, without letting Holmes - moving to and fro about the room as he was wont - disturb me.

As hard as it was to keep up with Holmes when I had full ability and willingness to reply to his statements, it was a thousand times harder when I was verbally unable to align my thoughts aloud. However, the situation at hand necessitated calculated silences - the sort that kept me from being perceived as quite insane.

"On your knees, Watson." Holmes urged, his voice just at my ear.

I shivered and knelt down to examine the carpet, looking hard at the fibers, my mind refusing to do anything helpful with the information, but I could almost make out a footprint. It seemed that my actions had attracted Lestrade's attention.

"Brr," he exclaimed suddenly, moving through the spot where I alone could see Holmes standing. "You're right doctor, there is a fierce chill in here."

I looked up sharply at him, almost agape. Then could it be there was a ghost? Did such lurid stories as were told in schoolyards contain some elements of truth after all?

Was I, perhaps, not so insane as I thought?

As I drew breath to confess all, Holmes stopped me with a sharp click of his tongue, and my attention slid sharply sideways toward him.

"Watson." He said, sharply, and I turned my head toward him out of habit. Lestrade's brows drew in on his stormy features, apparently he was reserving judgment so far on the fragility of my health and soundness, but I was doing little to reassure him with my long pauses and odd behavior.

"The window." Holmes explained, pointing out the reason for the Inspector's sudden chill. "It admits a discernable draft."

I got up, Lestrade's eyes following my ungainly rise to my feet as I went to push my fingertips up against the sill.

"There's a bad seal." I told Lestrade, and he looked puzzled before he moved closer to put his hand where mine was. "It allows the cold in."

"So it does!" Lestrade sounded surprised. He looked at me sidelong, measuring me weaselishly - sensing by instinct that some change greater than could by justified by the loss of Holmes had come over me.

"The carpet has been moved." I said slowly, automatically, my voice working before I could stop it.

"Rotated." Holmes corrected, triumphantly.

"Rotated." I agreed. My proximity to the floor had somehow allowed _Holmes_ to observe it more closely, a small detached portion of my mind rationalized, divided in so many directions that I wondered how I didn't fly to pieces.

"The concentration of mud and orientation of footprints suggests that this edge was the closest to the door when your suspect entered." I said mechanically. Lestrade was shocked into silence, so I forged on, Holmes filling in where I paused and I repeating like a ventriloquists puppet.

"He was a tall man, around six feet, and his left shoe has a recently mended sole. The suggestions is that he walks favoring his right leg."

"Treading more heavily on his left as he does so," prompted Holmes. "Thus the uneven wear."

I repeated, my eyes falling on the blood spread behind the ruined head of the deceased.

"He was struck from the front and fell straight down. Death was either instant or within minutes." This was my own expertise, Holmes making an impatient noise as I tried to get back onto the rail of what I was called for. Two deeper impressions in the carpet caught my attention.

"The killer stayed." Holmes observed thoughtfully. "He made sure the job was done."

"He watched this man die." I agreed, aloud. Lestrade privy to only half the conversation, followed the line of my gaze to the carpet, and studied the two impressions of still feet.

"I daresay that more of Holmes rubbed off on you than you've let on, Doctor." Lestrade said slowly, looking up at me at last as he finished speaking. He was squinting, trying to line his estimation of me back up in his brain.

"I know his methods," I said.

Holmes doubled over in the corner of my vision, shaking with great gouts of silent laughter.

"You do, indeed." Lestrade said, and his tone was gentle. Careful. He did think I was mad, then, though possibly not so much as I actually was.

Why change the orientation of the rug after he'd killed the man? I was about to ask Lestrade to help me move it back to its original position when Holmes stopped me.

"No, don't disturb the scene. Visualize." He steepled his fingers together, watching me with piercing, steel gray eyes over their points.

I aquiesced. Why wouldn't I, at this point?

With the carpet realigned properly, the tall man with muddy boots had entered to find Underwood

"What could be hidden by changing the orientation of the carpet, Watson?" Holmes said, standing near enough to Lestrade that it must have appeared to the Inspector as if I were scrutinizing some spot just above his head, from the upward glances he kept giving as my silence continued.

The rotated rug hid which wall or article of furniture edging the room the dead man would have been facing - since these could not be rotated, the carpet and corpse had been instead. I dropped my eyes to the carpet, deciding which way it had faced originally, and then stepped neatly around the body - avoiding the muddy prints in the carpet - and looked in the direction the deceased must have been facing when he died.

A large ancestral portrait dominated the wall I faced, hung over the sideboard. A woman sat demurely smiling out at us from it, her kind face framed masterfully by luminous gold curls. Her hands were folded around a handkerchief, and a necklace at her throat gleamed with a sapphire of sizeable and stately quality . What had so enraptured this man about the portrait that death could approach him so unchallenged from afore?

"Picture it, Watson. The man with muddy boots enters to find the master of the house already standing. They must converse some time, as these pacing tracks along the wall have loosened most of the mud to be left here, in the carpet. Underwood is the master of the situation - though some agitation is visible in the movements of his guest, he himself hardly moves. Something about the portrait has fixated him. He coolly stares at it to the exclusion of all else, and thus death takes him unaware, perhaps, even from the front."

Holmes moved at last, stepping forward as I watched, and looking up at the picture. It had hung there for some time by the look of it. So what detail had suddenly captivated the unfortunate Underwood, and at such a critical moment of danger?

"There are several options I consider to be possible." Holmes mused aloud, glancing over his shoulder at me. "But I should need more facts to continue, and if you don't shortly answer the Inspector, I think he shall quite preclude that possibility by calling a second Doctor. For you."

I realized, as Holmes said it, that Lestrade had repeated my title twice into the long, strange silence descended once I had begun to investigate the room.

"Doctor Watson." He tried again to catch my attention, his ferrety eyebrows drawn in together in concern. "Are you quite alright?" He asked, when he saw that he had my attention at last.

"A bit lost in thought, I'm afraid." I said, with as much reassurance in my tone as I could muster. "I was just taken by this rather masterful portrait, I confess. Do you know anything about it?"

"Bravo, Watson!" Holmes shouted, very nearly distracting me into again looking at him.

"She's a pretty one, isn't she Doctor?" Lestrade remarked, oblivious to my distraction. "It is a portrait of the man's mother - dead these three years now - when she was young. I understand it was painted on the occasion of her wedding to the senior Mr. Underwood himself."

"How curious." Holmes exclaimed, jerking my attention back to the painting, which he was practically pressing his nose to the canvas of. He did not explain himself.

"I suppose you've asked the servants about it, to know all that." I remarked, wishing I could scowl at my friend's apparition, but quite unable to maintain a facade of sanity while doing so.

"Of course I did. I'm quite thorough, as you well know, Doctor. I have a theory that perhaps intended art theft was the cause of this unfortunate happenstance." He looked quite smug about his theory, then gave a nervous chuckle. "I daresay our Old Friend-" and here, there was no question to whom Lestrade referred, of course "-would have come to much the same conclusion."

"Hardly." Holmes answered, with a sharp look of distaste aimed at the Inspector.

"You'll agree it's a fine piece, Doctor, and I'm sure it would fetch a fine price. Undoubtedly the killer lost the nerve to steal it once his grisly deed had been done - and a right shame too. This picture in the hands of someone would be much as good as a smoking gun."

"But the man was clubbed to death." Holmes interjected, as I did my best to simply nod at the inspector's theory and keep my eyes appropriately trained on the one speaker in the conversation who was both still alive and audible to anyone other than me. "If a crook had come for the art, he need never have confronted Underwood for it. Ask him why the piece is still hanging there, if it was to be stolen!"

I did not.

"Did the servants see or hear anything else?" I asked, wondering how the murderer had escaped unseen if company was known to be in the house.

"It seems Mr. Underwood had sent the maid and butler both to their leisure a bit early yesterday, though both said that was not uncommon."

"I should have a few questions for the servants myself if that were possible." Holmes said, for all that I could tell to the air in general, since I was entirely unable to answer him. He shot me a wry look, to which I did not respond.

"How strange, since it would seem he was expecting the company." I said. Lestrade looked at me again for a very long time.

"Don't explain yourself." Holmes said after a moment . "He's much more entertaining when he's frustrated. He also tends to actually look at the clues he's presented."

"What makes you say that, Doctor?"

"The man was struck from the front, meaning he must have seen his assailant at least once, and yet the servants report no cry of alarm. Evidence in the carpet seems to indicate the two had a lengthy conversation, and yet there is no sign of a struggle - nothing but the rug is disturbed, and even that with a deliberate care."

"That he sent the servants to bed early is also telling." Holmes narrated for me to repeat. "He expected this calling and felt a need for secrecy in it - though I doubt he anticipated its final outcome."

"Well that's something to think about then, Doctor." Lestrade said strangely, something in his clipped tone conveying awe and concern into one. He looked a bit like he had seen a ghost. Or perhaps he had seen that I was seeing a ghost. He kept his peace on the matter.

-

I awoke in the middle of the night, realizing that I could hear Holmes' violin as clear as day, as if he were standing in the sitting room and playing me to sleep as he had so long ago, though even in the fog that clung to my mind in my sudden wakefulness I knew this could not be the case. A violin impromptu of _Deh Vieni Alla Finestra_, cunningly played but with the reverse effect of his previous applications of his violin work on my wakefulness. The serenade was beautiful, but entirely unappreciated

"I see you enjoyed the opera," I groaned into my pillow. The man being dead had done nothing to dull his abilities with the violin and to wreak havoc on my sleeping pattern. I had never heard him play this piece, so my mind...

"You're extrapolating, Watson, if you insist on defining this still as some kind of insanity. Though it does neither of us any harm-"

"Holmes," I interrupted, my pillow an entirely inefficient tool for blocking out imaginary sounds. "It is quite harmful to suffer from deprivation of sleep."

"Based on your knowledge, and fixation on the serenade given by Don Giovanni." Holmes returned to his earlier point without arguing mine. "Your mind creates this new piece."

I was not a composer, however. I knew nothing of musical theory.

"No you don't." Holmes answered, working the bow as yet over the strings, until I could no longer even think of sleep. "But the mind is a fantastic thing, capable of so much more than ever assumed."

With a clattering screech of notes, Holmes laid his violin and the bow aside. Unconsciously, my eyes went toward the case where I knew the Stradivarius rested. It was closed, a shrodinger's box for all its contents could be within or without.

"There is something we must discuss."

"At this hour?" I exclaimed, exasperated beyond all measure.

"You are most receptive to my current presence when alone, and most unable to resist responding to me when you have not had enough sleep. Hence, the hour of your awakening, if you'll forgive the phrase."

"So this is the most convenient time for you, then?" I snapped, at last casting my pillow aside. The weeks of sleeplessness and uncertainty of my own mental health were taking their fair toll by this point. I was fast losing any willingness I have to tolerate this intrusion of my insubordinate mind. If I was so insane, so far gone as to still be carrying on conversations I could not forsee the outcome of, how could I not just surrender totally into this breakdown of my mental capacities? Why was there still this overwhelming certainty that this _must_ be in my mind and nowhere else? There was not the least bit temptation to surrender myself quietly into a sanitarium, even if it would have been a relief beyond comprehension to relieve myself of my responsibility for my own wellbeing. I just could not bring myself to that point.

"Undoubtedly." Holmes said, sitting on the foot of my bed. I could feel the transfer of weight - my mind playing a trick on me to correspond with what it expected from the motion my eyes thought they perceived. The illusion was so complete, I could even begin to doubt my own memories of his death, rather than my delusion that he was sitting here with me.

"Watson," he said, sadly. "I _am_ dead."

"Then why," I gasped, a torrent of emotion welling up inside me at his frank words, "Why are you still here?"

"Let's..." Holmes began, before he stopped himself with a small, secretive smile. "Why don't we look at this logically?"

I sat silent, uncertain how he meant to approach this.

"Medically, how would you assess your condition?" He said, darting one of his long, lean hands into his dressing gown pocket to retrieve his pipe. I resisted the urge to protest his smoking in my bed chamber - rationally, if that was how we were to approach this, it mattered not one whit.

"Insanity." I answered at last, letting out a breath I had not been aware I was holding. It was perilously easy to say it, if only just to myself and Holmes. I felt as if it would be just as easy to say were he real.

"Would you really?" Holmes asked, tamping down his pike tobacco with a precise, calculated motion. As he did so, his gaze slid sidelong toward me, attentive to my posture. "It seems to me you are lacking in most of the symptoms of insanity."

"The _one_ I have is fairly conclusive." I said, sitting up. "There are some that would confirm my diagnosis based on the very fact that I was arguing my sanity to the very hallucination that-"

"Some, yes." Holmes cut me off sharply, lighting his pipe with a match, and closing his eyes. "But would _you_?"

It was an item I had considered every day since I had begun seeing him, nearly a year ago.

"Objectively, Watson." He scolded, without even opening his eyes. "Diagnose yourself as if you were a stranger entering your practice. You are kind enough, I think, to treat yourself fairly as thus."

I was stalled by this request, at having to force my mind into a different mode than the one it had been operating in for so long. Holmes was right of course. I had long since lost objectivity. Even when put to me his way, it was a difficult puzzle to approach.

"Very well, Watson. Let us try this way." Holmes leaned back, hunching his shoulders like some great, perched hawk while he braced his weight on his hands, spread behind him on the coverlet. His pipe stayed balanced precariously in his mouth. "Imagine it is me. I have come to you to tell you that it is I hallucinating that my greatest friend is still alive - though I know quite logically that he is not, having buried him myself. What if it were _I_, seeing _you_?"

_And what if it were?_ Was this possible? Had Holmes ever even existed at all? Had I?

"Watson," he warned. "Do not go too far down those paths. Answer my question as I put it to you, and consider nothing else."

"Well." I gathered myself, wishing for nothing so much as a fortifying glass of brandy. "I should ask whether you functioned normally otherwise."

The smell of his tobacco was slowly filling the room. I knew it would cling to my sheets and pillows, then, detectable only to me until they were washed again. All the fantastic detail of it, all the intricacies.

"I do, however." Holmes answered. "Somewhat improved even. Through my conversations with my friend - inaudible to others - I have learned things about medicine I am certain I did not know before. Indeed I can now treat some illnesses on my own."

"And are you disturbed by this?" I asked, falling carefully into the role he had assigned me.

"Naturally I am somewhat so - but it is a natural enough relationship in seemance. It continues much as it would have if he remained alive."

I did not dwell on the fact that we were now speaking of me in the past tense. It had little relevance to the argument, somehow. Now, looking back, I can see that here might be the door to true madness, these questions of how much a mind might construct in grief and despair. Would it not make more sense for me to exist in Holmes' extraordinary mind than for Holmes to inhabit, intact, my relatively commonplace one? I suppose I have only this penned document - should it even actually exist - as my proof otherwise.

"And your moods? Your temper remains unchanged?" I asked.

"Largely." He smiled, his eyes still closed. "Save when my friend interrupts my sleep with impromptu opera."

"I would never," I said, cajoled in spite of myself.

"I expect if you tried, my dear Watson, it would be more than enough to keep me awake." He answered wickedly. "Your diagnosis?"

"You retain at least enough sanity for functionality."I said, my mood somewhat improved when I realized it was an honesty. "_If_ your friend consents to letting you have enough sleep."

"I'm certain he'll come around, eventually. He's quite an outstanding fellow, after all." Pausing only for a meditative puff of his pipe, Holmes continued. "Very well. Logically, we have excluded medical insanity as a cause - you have no family history after all. You have always handled emotional trauma admirably in the past, and you suffer from no malady that attacks the brain. We must move next to the fledgling science of psychology to attempt to explain my presence. Freud might offer guilt as a factor in your particular fixation on my presence."

"Guilt?" I asked, and then turned my mind to it. There was a certain regret at not being able to save him, though when I had arrived there was nothing to save.

Indeed, I did wonder at times at how things might have changed had Holmes not wanted to protect me, but guilt? How could I blame myself for that catastrophic battle of wills? Had I been there, and useless when Holmes most needed me, then perhaps I would be guilty. Holmes, however, had protected me from that curse, allowing Moriarty to play on an aspect of my character that I could never be ashamed of - my humanity. Holmes himself had judged that there was no favorable outcome to be had by my presence - in fact, had perhaps even saved me from my own death - and I trusted his outlook on the situation implicitly.

"I regret your death, and I do wonder sometimes what I might have done differently to prevent it, but how could I consider it my fault?" I asked, slowly, wondering if I really wanted an answer to the question.

"In no way should you even attempt such an atrocity on your own person. I forbid it!" He said, as if there were no possible answer that would satisfy him of my guilt, and with such an eminent opinion as his on the matter I should allow no argument, internal or external, to sway me otherwise.

I made no attempt to discern which of those categories Holmes' argument fell under.

"_Tu crois le tenir, il t'évite; Tu crois l'éviter, il te tient!_" He said, as my considering silence stretched too long for his patience.

"You can't be haunting me from beyond your grave just to quote opera, Holmes." I stated, groping the nightstand for my pocket watch and some idea of the time. Only a pale beam of light streamed through the curtains. A glance at my watch told me only that it was passing the third hour of the morning, which hardly surprised me. It was a typical hour for Holmes' intensity to rear itself.

He stopped me from sitting up with a look.

"So if not guilt, then what?" He asked, puffing out a great gout of smoke.

"Taking my extensive knowledge of you into account, I can come up with only one answer to fit your character. You are hardly a masochist, so you cannot be conjuring me simply to torture yourself. Neither are you alone in the world - though I know you are lonely for more intimate company, you have other friends."

After a long moment of silence in which Holmes puffed away mysteriously at his black briar, the shape so familiar I could identify it in the moonlight, I realized he was stalling. Moisture clicked faintly in the stem of his pipe, and my own thoughts came to a standstill on the notion. _Sherlock Holmes was hesitating._

"What is it, then!" I cried, unable to stand the game, and yet so enrapt in it I could not withdraw back into denial.

"You tell me," Sherlock said, leaning across the bed. His eyes caught the moonlight, a strange intensity lent to them by the glow. "I have helped you eliminate falsehoods, but I cannot give you the answer."

Even as he spoke I knew that I had so long been distracted by him that I had not thought about what I knew of myself.

"I feel there is unfinished business between us." I said, slowly. Of course there was - Holmes had died in the middle of _everything_, as shockingly and suddenly as he'd come into my life.

When we'd met, become friends, he'd become like a piece of me, fitting some gap I hadn't known existed until the part was rudely yanked out again and flung over the edge of the falls.

Holmes smiled in triumph. " Yes, Watson."

But _everything_ between us was unfinished, I thought. I had never said goodbye, as certainly as I had never said - would never say - the thousand other things I could have told him. I could write them as stories, but I could never resolve them.

"I have unfinished business as well, my dear doctor." Holmes interrupted my thoughts smoothly. "Though I'm afraid the conclusions wrought by my admission will not banish me, as you might hope yours will."

If Holmes was insecure, his voice carefully merry, it was because I must have imagined him so.

"Well," I said, my thoughts still awhirl despite the despicably late hour. "Get on with it, then. I require more than two hours consecutive sleep, and I have patients in the morning."

"John." Holmes said, cutting through my irritability with a tone as soft and confessing as a hymn. "I love you."

Every part of me stopped still. _Now?_ I thought, stupidly, as tears sprung up in my eyes. _Now?_

"Holmes, you cannot tell me this _now_." I protested, alarmed.

"Can't I? Whyever not? Because you will always wonder now how much of me - as I exist now - is your imagination or wishful thinking? And yet - my methods are still sound, even with you as their clumsy practitioner."

"Because _you are dead_!" I cried, believing even as I wanted to doubt - my own will and imagination would not make him so obtusely, callously cruel to me. There was no _fantasy_ in that, none of the escape that psychology texts indicated my mind should be seeking by such a practice as keeping my dearest friend alive for only me to experience.

Holmes set his briar on the table adjacent to the bed, his long, thin arm extending to the extreme of its reach. My eyes followed the motion, tracked the thin trail of smoke curling from its bowl. What could I possibly make of this admission? A surprising amount of pain, the most profound feeling of loss I had yet experienced, accompanied the revelation.

And yet the shocking truth of the admission seemed to strike me as hollow as a bell and as ringing and numb with emptiness.

Holmes studied me gravely, waiting for something. I realize now it must have been an answering admission on my part, though in my shock none was forthcoming. His expression folded closed again, like the wings of a paper bird.

"Now is the only time, Watson." Holmes said harshly. He stood up suddenly, the bedsprings creaking with his departure. "After all it is hardly illegal this way. There is no impurity in memory. One cannot be arrested for loving the idea of another man." His tone rapidly descended into a level of frigidity that plumbed the very depths of chill.

And for all that we were closer now than ever, and it seemed that Holmes could now read my very thoughts, there was still that chasm of understanding between us that was at times impossible to leap.

I was not disgusted.

I was not repulsed or frightened of the legality involved in his suggestion by its very nature. I was not ashamed of myself, or him.

I was in love. And it was so far beyond too late as to have required an entirely different time line to realize what it was between us that I needed so badly to have said to him.

"Holmes," I whispered to the slamming door, "I also love you."  
-


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will have more notes in my LJ tomorrow, and I am SORRY this is so long. I did not intend for it to be long enough to require 2 posts!

_**Fic: Holmes/Watson, Commentadore 2/2**_

  
**Title:** Commentadore 2/2 [Go to part 1!](http://community.livejournal.com/cox_and_co/449370.html)  
**Author:** [](http://cog-nomen.livejournal.com/profile)[**cog_nomen**](http://cog-nomen.livejournal.com/)  
**Fandom:** Sherlock Holmes  
**Wordcount:** 15,835 (total!)  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Pairing(s):** Holmes/Watson  
**Warning(s):** (highlight to reveal) Sort of Character Death. Reichenbach.

  
I was disturbed from my act by the sound of the downstairs bell, an old familiar noise that stilled my hand on the plunger. Did she have a visitor? Her tread on the stairs up caused me some alarm, and I hastily withdrew the needle from my arm to cast it back into the drawer where it had lain for so long like a serpent in wait.

Holmes watched me coolly as I hurriedly rolled my sleeve back down - as I had so often entered to find him doing. He had no comment as Mrs. Hudson entered, biting her lip in uncertainty.

"There's a gentleman to see you downstairs, Doctor." She said, hesitantly. "I tried to tell him you didn't like to take strangers without an appointment, but he insisted I come up with his card at least."

The card announced in crisp, elegant typeface that my apparent visitor was a 'Mr. Shaw'. It was cream in color and felt fine and thready to the touch.

"Mr. Shaw has just come into some unexpected money." Holmes said, suddenly at my elbow to examine the card. "And he's left a-"

"Message for you on the back." He and Mrs. Hudson both concluded as I pulled away one hand to find faint smudges of ink in the creases of my fingers.

Though the back was now smeared, I could still make out that the hasty scrawl had said 'Underwood Case', which caught my attention rapidly. I expected he was some unknown Yard inspector, though why he had not announced himself as such was a puzzle.

"Because he isn't one, Watson." Holmes answered my thoughts, idly, still considering the message on the back of the card.

"Show him up, Mrs. Hudson - thank you." I said.

"And some tea!" Holmes prompted.

"And some tea - if you would, please." I requested, more humbly.

She nodded, and moments later Mr. Shaw entered the sitting room hesitantly. He was a tall man, with almost classically Roman features - a powerful jaw and nose beneath wide-set and dark eyes. His golden hair made a valiant effort to curl even in spite of its fashionably short crop. His bearing was almost comically sheepish for so powerfully built a man. Though he was far from graceless, there was some awkwardness about him.

"His clothes," Holmes said. "They are new - see that the darker shade of his skin extends well past the cuffs on his shirt? He is not used to finery."

Further evidence for his earlier assessment of the calling card, which he had not bothered to elucidate. I supposed he was referring to the freshly cut edges and crisply impressed ink, as well as the expensive cardstock. How he knew they were not simply new cards for a man who had run out of them, I did not care to ask. My impressions were much the same, given how he seemed uncertain of how to politely handle himself in company, as Mrs. Hudson laid out a fine tea.

"Sit, please, Mr. Shaw." I said, indicating the divan that had so amiably filled that role for so long, as Mrs. Hudson bustled away on her own business. I had to clear an old stack of texts on insects from my chair - I had not yet had the heart to overly tidy the place, and most everything still occupied its last place of Holmes' convenience.

"Would you like a brandy?" I asked, remembering myself before I sat, as Holmes rapped on the sideboard, where Mr. Shaw's eyes had traveled as I readied myself.

He accepted, and I poured a measure for each of us before I settled in. The brandy proved most agreeable to the pair of us it seemed, and there was a short silence before he commenced.

"Doctor Watson, I really am terribly sorry to intrude." He said, looking studiously into the amber depths of his glass. "I was told you were investigating Mr. Underwood's case-"

Here I had to interrupt, politely, lest he confide anything of a sensitive nature to me under the incorrect impression.

"I'm afraid I'm not investigating it, Mr. Shaw." I said, apologetically. "I was merely called in as the consulting physician by Scotland Yard. My only involvement was to determine the probable cause and time of death."

His blank look informed me that this was not the answer he had expected. He glanced around suddenly, as if to assure himself of his surroundings - that I was, in fact, the correct Doctor Watson.

"My apologies, doctor." He said, when he was apparently satisfied with the authenticity of 221B. "Inspector Lestrade gave me the impression that you were also looking into the mystery - and I thought, what with your writings and all..."

"I could not even begin to solve a crime without Mr. Holmes' fantastic intellect." I said, helplessly.

Holmes, for his part, remained silently by the sideboard, watching our guest attentively. I recognized his intent study as the same sort of calculating measurement he began when adding up sums of information in his head into a whole figure of the crime. I could not imagine what about our guest had sparked this sudden interest.

Mr. Shaw looked quite crestfallen by the news, averting his eyes before he spoke again.

"You see, Doctor, it's just that I find myself in a tight spot."  
I was somewhat struck with pity for this awkward man, though Holmes broke sharply into the conversation with a warning.

"He is underestimating you, Watson. Don't be misled - look at his shoes!"

In typical Holmes fashion, he had indicated only common - if older - walking shoes. They seemed unremarkable to me on my initial inspection.

"Mr. Shaw, if you came to lay your troubles before me," I reassured, dragging my eyes up from his feet, "I will gladly offer you the best advice I can."

Thank you sir, and I am truly sorry to pile all this up on you - only, I haven't any idea what else to do."

I sat back, feeling rather unused to leading an interview, and gestured for him to continue.

"It began some weeks ago, Doctor, when I was looking about for a business partner. I've had some luck as an inventor, you see, and I've come up for a new design for a self-inking printing press that halves the time - well, I suppose that doesn't matter too much. I was looking for a partner to help me fund the project when I got in touch with Mr. Underwood."

As he spoke, though I listened intently, my eyes were drawn back to his shoes. The soles seemed irregular, mismatched somehow.

"Well, he liked my idea well enough, and agreed to go half in for the first one - just to make sure it worked the way it was intended to and all - and from there he would help me get the manufactory off the ground, if everything were to his liking."

"It seems that everything was going smoothly between you?"

"Indeed it was, Doctor. Though I have to say that once or twice, Mr. Underwood got downright queer about things."

Holmes looked interested - in his own thoughtful way. Though his eyes had closed and his features relaxed, I could tell that he was listening with intent.

"How was that?" I asked.

"Well," began Shaw, "before, we'd always meet at his club or my workshop to talk business or for me to give a demonstration. of the machine. But then he demanded we meet at his estate - and I didn't mean to be rude or anything, Doctor. Only, I'm just a simple fellow and I never did feel right at fancy houses. He was quite insistent, though, and even started to get mad about it. Since he was the one with the money, sir, and ideas don't put nearly so much food on the table, I agreed.

Only, when I got there it got stranger still. It wasn't business he wanted to talk about at all, sir. He went on and on about this portrait of his mother, I think she was, and asked me a lot of peculiar questions like, 'Isn't she familiar?' He made special to point out the jewel she was holding."

_His shoes_, I realized suddenly, and sat up. _The left one was freshly soled!_

"Are you saying you were with Mr. Underwood the night he was murdered?" I asked, unable to believe that his murderer had walked into my very rooms. I wished that my revolver was tucked into my pocket instead of shut away in the desk.

"I swear by God's own truth, Doctor, that he was surely alive when I left him. He was hopping mad about his old Ma, and I didn't know her from Eve you see. For some reason, this seemed to enrage the man. Maybe she was famous and I offended him somehow, but I thought it better to apologize and give him some time to cool off."

"How peculiar." I said, absorbing the information, though I knew it could not be complete. Shaw's own shoe prints impressed deeply in the carpet at the corpses' feet told me more of the story.

"Indeed it is, Doctor - imagine my surprise when I hear that he's died! Killed no less, and the Yard knocking on my door." He turned his glass in his hands worriedly. "My machine has been a fantastic success, Doctor, but there's folks what think I must have stolen my fortune to gain it so suddenly. An odd, unpleasant business, this."

He looked up at me, entreating my help, and yet I already knew he must not be telling me the entire truth. Under the excuse of fetching a pipe - one of Holmes', but it would do - I slipped open the drawer containing my revolver. I left the Webley in the drawer, but stayed in easy reach as I went through the act of packing the pipe. It was some unfavored briar, perhaps even from one of Holmes' disguises. I filled it with Ship's from my pocket.

Holmes was staring at me with much amusement. I affected to be thinking deeply while I lit the pipe, near gagging on the foul mix of Holmes' shag sunk deep into the pipe's wood and my own tobacco. I feel I held up admirably under such duress, while I stared pointedly at Holmes for direction.

"Ah yes, my dear Watson," he said theatrically. "There's the rub!"

"Do you challenge him with the facts your observations have revealed, when he could quite easily become violent?" Holmes mused, fetching one of his more favored pipes from the mantle over the fireplace. "Or do you pretend sympathy and ignorance, and hope he will reveal more of his hand?

With the reassurance of my pistol close at hand, I came to a quick decision.

"Mr. Shaw." I said firmly, exhaling vile smoke and willing my eyes not to water. "If you want my advice, you will have to be honest with me."

When he began to protest, I cut him off.

"The evidence is at your feet, I'm afraid. Your distinctive shoe prints stood quite deeply at the feet of Mr. Underwood's corpse. You were there when he died - and close enough to make sure the deed was done."

Shaw's expression slowly changed from curiosity to fear, and then anger came rapidly onto his features.

"You said you weren't investigating!" He snarled, half-rising.

"I wasn't," I answered.

"Merely observing," finished Holmes.

"Merely observing," I repeated. "And I shared those very observations with Inspector Lestrade, leaving him to make what he would of them. If you have a better explanation for these actions, It would greatly help your case to reveal it.

The language - emerging sharply in my own voice - felt rough and unfamiliar to me. Holmes stood looking at me with unabashed pride. His usually steely eyes were softened with volumes of affection he never would have laid open for anyone else to see. Our guest, meanwhile, was looking murderously in my direction, before he composed himself under what must have looked like a cool stare.

"I did go back in, sir. I thought maybe I had been a great fool, and I could apologize for the insult to his mother. He was already all but dead when I entered. I did stand looking down at him, sir, but only because I was torn as to what to do. I couldn't hell for help without suspicion, and anyone could see there was no helping anyway. His head was lain clean open! So I left again, and no one the wiser, I thought."

"How long were you away from the study?" I asked, letting my pipe burn itself away mostly unattended. I wished for my notebook but did not want to overly busy my hands when I had seen his temper only moments before.

"That's the funny thing - no more than ten minutes maybe - I went outside and had a quick smoke, thinking up a storm and trying to get back my nerves. Then I went straight back inside." Shaw was patting his pockets for a cigarette just then too. "I hoped to catch him still in his study, and try and make the whole mess up to him some way."

"Did you observe anyone else coming or going?" I asked, at Holmes' prompting.

"It was the maid let me back in, Doctor. Real professional too - still in uniform that late at night. She was a right cute thing, with blonde curls peeking out from her bonnet. Hope he paid her well." He lit his cigarette.

"Watson!" Holmes exclaimed in the pause, but I didn't stop Shaw's narrative for his outburst.

"Did she let you back out again when you went?"

"No, sir. Said she was off to bed and I told her to sleep tight and no need to stay up on my account. I wonder that she didn't mention my visit to the inspector, though?"

"A wonder, indeed." Holmes said dryly. "We should have interviewed the staff, Watson!"

"The staff indicated that they had been sent to bed early that evening." I said, not bothering to correct Holmes on the point that 'we' were incapable of questioning anyone, as only one of 'us' actually existed.

"If you want my advice, you'll go straight back to Scotland Yard with your story - and the real one, mind."

Mr. Shaw looked disheartened at the news, but seemed to quickly resign himself to the task. Holmes looked thoughtful, and the man seemed so forlorn that I thought I must comfort him somehow.

"Chin up, Mr. Shaw - I'm sure the truth of the matter will soon come to light, and you'll look better for not having hidden what you know. I'll do what I can to look into the matter." I said, and Shaw looked up with a look of such immense gratitude that I regretted volunteering my meagre powers. What could I possibly hope to do for this man? My only leads were the marks in the carpet, which had now been explained, and the picture that had so infatuated Underwood.

"Thank you, Doctor!" Shaw was saying as he put on his coat and hat, preparing to depart after seizing my own unresponsive fingers in a ferocious shake. "I shall go to Scotland yard directly, and tell them straight away."

"There is one other clue." Holmes reminded. "The maid who was both sleeping, having retired early, and answering the door - having stayed up late and was remarkably attentive to her duty."

His voice could not entirely block out the man's assurances that everything would soon be put to rights now that I was on the job.

In the silence following his departure, I felt as if a whirlwind had just torn through my life. I sank into a vacant chair, atop a dusty pile of newspapers and other clutter, my thoughts locked into a sudden standstill of horror and disbelief at the venture I had just undertaken. How on earth could I help this man?

And yet surely I must try to - I had given my word, after all. Surely he would be counting on my assistance.

"The Yard will be only too pleased to doubt his story and take him into custody." Holmes said, watching thing trails of smoke curl away from the dying embers in the forgotten pipe with some small longing. "Which is for the best until we verify the truth-"

"Holmes," I barked, startling even myself with my sudden ire in the wake of my own numb confusion. "There is no we."

His answering look was so momentarily injured that I immediately regretted what I had said. It faded quickly to a blank, silent expression of the kind he used when he was very carefully measuring me.

Between us the silence stretched so long that I recalled the early days after his death when he only stood silently with me, visible at the edges of my vision like a heat mirage, and yet even then his presence had been a comfort.

What would I do without even his ghost?

Yet the silence still stretched, with me unable to tell him that even as he was now, I still needed him. Holmes finally stood straight and headed for his door. There was an old, familiar air of melancholy about him that cast my mind back to my activities of just half an hour before, before Shaw walked into the sitting room.

Surely, as deeply as my fortunes had sunk, a failed investigation into the death of a man could harm nothing but my reputation - and certainly less than my descent into the clutches of a cocaine addiction would. After all, Underwood was already dead, and my inept bungling could do him no harm. Perhaps, even good could be done for Shaw, if his story was true.

"Alright, Holmes. Alright." I said to the empty air it seemed, as he had disappeared into his room while I thought, and now the melancholy strains of violin music floated out to answer me. I knew he had heard, or at least understood the train of my thoughts as he now did even better than before.

An exultant if not melodic clatter of notes answered my statement, and Holmes appeared in his doorway with a pleased smile such as a tutor might use to favor a star student.

"Excellent, Watson! And not a moment to lose!"

I closed the drawer to the desk, hiding again from view the syringe and cocaine bottle, my revolver pointing with an accusatory air at them. Sparing only a brief mourning thought for the excellent supper that Mrs. Hudson was sure to prepare, and that I was equally assured of missing, I took up my cane and went out. Holmes strode at my side with purpose and soon we occupied a cab heading for the Underwood estate.  
-

We were greeted by the maid at the door, and as I greeted her, I could feel Holmes stiffen at my shoulder with sudden interest. A sidelong glance revealed that he was studying her with great interest, and as I stepped inside I could feel that we were on the verge of solving it.

Holmes, as always, already had his answer.

"Watson," He said, and I glanced at him. On his face the triumph was written. "Ask her where she's hidden the family sapphire."

I did not hesitate.

"Madam, I'm have just one question for you to begin with. Where have you hidden the Underwood's prized sapphire?" I asked, still holding my hat in my hands as she reached to take my things.

The maid stopped dead still, with such an astonished look on her features that she could not seem to form words for some moments.

It was then that I suddenly knew - I suddenly saw things as Holmes did, his keen insight. Her ears, her golden curls, the distinct color of her irises and the shape of her nose - she must surely be related to the woman in the picture. Understanding thundered down around me in a way that threatened to dangerously avert my attention when I most needed it.

She had surely been an illegitimate child, though the mother had cared for her - had given her the family's treasured sapphire to prove her heritage should the climate ever seem right for such a revelation. The jewel was so tied to the family history that of course Underwood had been practically obsessed with it - and surely she had contacted him, by letter or telegram, with the idea to ransom it back to him, while working in his very house and observing him unknown.

Underwood had likely assumed that the intimate knowledge revealed in the telegrams had come from his newfound business partner, though likely Shaw's unexpected reluctance to mention the jewel, or demand a sum of money had struck the man as frustrating. Angry, and suspecting that blackmail would soon ensue, Underwood had confronted Shaw.

He had assumed wrong.

The maid reached into her pocket, and pulled out a jewel of magnificent size, it's deep blue luster casting back the light in sapphire reflections that danced across the walls and ceiling of the room.

"It's mine, sir. My mother gave it to me, and she said that if I was ever in trouble I should take it back to the Underwoods and explain the situation. Only, he got so... confused somehow, Doctor."

She closed her eyes, and shook her head.

"Magnificent, Watson." Holmes said.  
But I was suddenly so struck with disbelief and an inability to understand my insight - how had I come to know these things? By glancing at a portrait, or some shoe prints in a rug? The rotated carpet?

"To hide the dent in the floor, Watson. He shoved the poor woman, his own sister, against the very painting that he could suddenly see her resemblance in so clearly. It fell, and the massive gilded frame that contains the canvas crashed against him, striking him dead."

I braced my hand against my forehead, attempting to comprehend the information. I could clearly see the situation in my mind's eye. The maid confronting him at last with the sapphire, and asking only for recognition - Underwood, already enraged from his dealings with Shaw, taking her by the shoulders and shoving her hard against the sideboard.

It rocked back, and lifted the painting free of its hanging, sending it crashing down on Underwood, and rescuing the lady from his wrath.

"I saw the signs of its tumble to the floor and a hasty re-hanging on the painting itself." Holmes said, revealing the reasons for his absorption.

"Child," I said gently, aloud. "You'll have to tell them what happened - Mr. Underwood is in some very serious trouble if you do not."

"I know sir, I was just frightened." She said, and she put out her hands. I took them - and they were so very small, her fingers as delicate as a doll's. I felt pity for her, but also some deep distrust - the facts that Holmes had observed were all that turned this from intentional murder into an accident.

I moved into the study, and pulled back the corner of the rug to reveal the impressions made in the wood floor from where the painting had fallen after striking Underwood.

"Did you move the carpet all by yourself?" I asked, observing suddenly two distinct and matching marks that were overlapped by Shaw's footprints. She shook her head.

"No sir, Mr. Shaw helped - he heard the shouting and ran in, I think." She said, and put her hand against her forehead, as if pained. "He said I should tell the police, but he'd leave it up to me - and since I was the man's half sister and all I might even have some inheritance - but I don't want it, sir. I just want to get away from that wretched painting - she gives me the creeps, watching me all the time, sir."

The rest of the afternoon proceeded in a daze for me. I summoned Inspector Lestrade, and to his great surprise narrated the solution to the case - exactly as Holmes prompted me to. The maid - her name was Molly, and she was the daughter of the late Mrs. Underwood by a man of lower class that she had courted after her husband had died. She had hidden the pregnancy, and given the child away, though she occasionally visited Molly.

I seemed to detach from my body and observe all of this from afar - I could scarcely believe that any of it had happened to me. How could I have known the things that I did? I was not Sherlock Holmes - I did not have his tremendous wealth of knowledge, his astute eye for detail, or a tenth of the intelligence he possessed, and yet somehow with his help - or at least his ghost, who only I could see - I had solved a case that was entirely beyond my means to solve.

I teetered then on the brink of sanity, and found myself sitting down suddenly on the kerb outside 221B Baker Street when it was all over. The cabby clattering away without a glance back as I struggled to make sense of everything. My mind grew fuzzy again, as if I had not slept in days once more. It was impossible, everything I could comprehend said as much.

I shook suddenly, and I could distinctly feel Holmes' hands on my shoulders.

"Watson," He said urgently, and I could feel his hands on mine somehow, as I struggled to anchor my mind. "You are here to _help me_, if that is how you need to think of it."

The very normality of the notion, the very idea that I was not the leader in the situation, was like a return home after a long voyage. I had felt the very same sensation on returning to London - albeit for just the briefest of instants on the train platform as I returned from Maiwand. Now, the feeling lingered. Yes, I could do it this way. It had been natural, the role I had fallen into with Holmes from the beginning. The very thing that had been out of place all these months was that I was forced into the unnatural role of having to lead the relationship, by my very own reluctance to cede direction to a being I was uncertain whether I could trust.

Whatever caused Holmes to be here, now, he was still Holmes, through some means I did not need to question. If I simply did not question, if I simply trusted him as he had proved again and again I could, if I _just had faith_, we could make this work.

"Come now, Watson, I've solved at least a thousand cases.' Holmes chuckled, eyes landing pointedly on me. "A thousand and three in England alone."

I let my brows arch at his inopportune reference.

"Perhaps you are my Leporello instead of my Boswell."

"Holmes, that is the most brilliant suggestion I believe you have ever made. Well, not that last one." I said, of his common display of how well he knew me. "I suppose you know how we shall convince Lestrade to go along with any of this?"

"I think your rather fantastic display of intuition and my methodology will help us on that front, if indeed we cannot just trust him with our exact situation." Holmes replied, steepling his fingers together. "Mark my words, Watson. I have often sold the man short on creativity, but I suspect his other excellent traits may go a long way, if we should even reveal ourselves to him. He may not fully understand, but to further his own career he may, at the very least, begrudgingly accept."

"Holmes," I admitted finally, looking up into his eyes at last as he stood over me, leaning down. "I do love you, you know."

"I had already deduced it." Holmes smiled, but his cheeks darkened, and he suddenly found something of great interest in the evening sky.  
-

Lestrade did in fact come to accept my unusual, newfound talent, though I never confided the entirety of what it entailed to him. In a way, this manuscript is my confession to those who knew me personally and therefore must have instantly seen that there was something amiss with my published accounts of the cases that Sherlock Holmes and I investigated after his encounter with the falls. I am greatly obliged to him, and the many friends and acquaintances without whom we could never have achieved such a level of success.

We solved many cases together, and if I wrote them the way I did, it is because I could no longer egotistically ascribe Holmes' greatness to some fault, some tic of insanity in my own lesser mind. I can no more take credit for his brilliance, his shining courage or incredible mind, than I could the building of the London Bridge. However he existed, or didn't, it is he who deserves the praise for his work, and I shall see he gets it without regard for the question of my own sanity - I can only hope that very same question does not tarnish his name, or the greatness of this fantastic impossibility of love between us.

If I must put some answer to this question of reality, beyond what I have already said, I suppose it should be this.

I should no more exist without him than he without I.

  
The End.  
John H. Watson, June 22, 1924

_And now let us all united  
Sing the verse of old indited,  
Join in chorus ev'ry one.  
(Don Giovanni, Finale)_


End file.
